"No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution, which we now know to be a simple fact."

"Scientists who utterly reject evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities."

Many of those scientists hold impressive credentials in chemistry, zoology, physics, paleontology, anthropology, molecular and cell biology, and bio-engineering. They are geologists, astrophysicists, quantum theorists and more with doctorates from Cambridge, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Michigan, Temple, and Berkeley. They demolish the argument that intelligent design is just a new name for creationism or Creation Science (supposedly supported by only narrow-minded, backwoods fundamentalists). They are skeptical! They hear that the scientific community universally accepts Darwinism, and they dissent. In a two-page advertisement in The Weekly Standard they stated, "We are skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”

Other scientists offered Getting the Facts Straight, a detailed 151- page critique of the

PBS series Evolution claiming it "failed to present accurately and fairly the scientific problems with the evidence for Darwinian evolution." (Nor did it address disagreements among evolutionary biologists themselves!) .

The published works of I.D. scientists deal with some of these scientific problems. Jonathan Wells, in Icons of Evolution, systematically dismantles several pillars of evolutionary doctrine, including the Miller Experiment, Darwin's Tree of Life,

Haeckel's embryos, Archaeopteryx and others.

Michael Denton's book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis shows the complete absence of any transitional forms in the fossil record. William Lane Craig describes how everything that begins to exist (like the universe through the Big Bang) must have a cause in The Kalam Cosmological Argument.

Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution delivers what many consider a fatal blow to Darwinism. In it, Behe demonstrates irrefutably how irreducibly complex biological systems defy a Darwinian explanation, because to function, they must be produced all at once, not by gradual, successive modifications of a precursor system. For even if every component could theoretically have a different function prior to being assembled in it's present form, natural selection has no explanation for how it did assemble into it's present functioning form. And that functioning is determined by pre-encoded information contained in the DNA of the cells. The first cell couldn't have formed by any known means without this information.

Biophysist Dean Kenyon theorized that the development of life was inevitable because of an inherent chemical attraction of amino acids and their bases in his textbook Biochemical Predestination. He has since repudiated this theory and now believes that the best evidence points toward design.

Irreducible complexity in cells is probably the best example of an “Achilles Heel” for evolutionists. And many acknowledge this fact. Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences wrote this in his article "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines": "The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines..." Every part of every cell shows evidence of having been uniquely designed!

Biochemist Franklin Harold, in The Way of the Cell, discounts intelligent design but states, "… but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations."

Anyone wanting to understand the intelligent design movement would do well to read the books of I.D. proponents, not simply accept the criticisms of its opponents. An excellent summary of the evidence for I.D. is from Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Lee Strobel entitled “The Case For A Creator.” It is very readable, well documented and deals with both scientific evidence and the philosophical/theological implications of Darwinism and intelligent design.

A great thing about I. D. is that it doesn't rule out certain conclusions in a de facto manner - i.e. that "true" science must remain completely within a naturalistic framework.

Those in the intelligent design movement allow the evidence to take them where it will in seeking the best, most probable explanations for the big questions of life and mysteries of the universe. We would all be wise to follow such a course. Let us pray that here at UAF open, respectful dialogue can result from the process of considering the validity of both theories' claims.